EXAMPLE - NEXT Function

The following dataset contains order information for the preceding 12 months. You want to compare the current month's average against the preceding quarter.

Source:

Date

Amount

12/31/15

118

11/30/15

6

10/31/15

443

9/30/15

785

8/31/15

77

7/31/15

606

6/30/15

421

5/31/15

763

4/30/15

305

3/31/15

824

2/28/15

135

1/31/15

523

Transform:

Using the ROLLINGAVERAGE function, you can generate a column containing the rolling average of the current month and the two previous months:

window value: ROLLINGAVERAGE(Amount, 3, 0) order: -Date

Note the sign of the second parameter and the order parameter. The sort is in the reverse order of the Date parameter, which preserves the current sort order. As a result, the second parameter, which identifies the number of rows to use in the calculation, must be positive to capture the previous months.

Technically, this computation does not capture the prior quarter, since it includes the current quarter as part of the computation. You can use the following column to capture the rolling average of the preceding month, which then becomes the true rolling average for the prior quarter. The window column refers to the name of the column generated from the previous step:

window value: NEXT(window, 1) order: -Date

Note that the order parameter must be preserved. This new column, window1, contains your prior quarter rolling average:

rename col:window1 to:'Amount_PriorQtr'

You can reformat this numeric value:

set col:Amount_PriorQtr value:NUMFORMAT(Amount_PriorQtr, '###.00')

You can use the following transform to calculate the net change. This formula computes the change as a percentage of the prior quarter and then formats it as a two-digit percentage.

NOTE: You might notice that there are computed values for Amount_PriorQtr for February and March. These values do not factor in a full three months because the data is not present. The January value does not exist since there is no data preceding it.